The Cordish Companies and Bruce Smith Enterprise have reached structural completion on Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia, marking a topping-out milestone for the 445,000-square-foot integrated resort slated to open in Petersburg by the end of 2027. The permanent destination replaces a temporary gaming facility that began operations in January 2026 and currently employs more than 600 people — and the full resort build-out is projected to add another 1,000 permanent positions on top of that baseline.
For hospitality and foodservice operators tracking casino resort development, the scale of the F&B program is the headline number: 20 distinct restaurant and bar concepts planned across the property, anchored by three existing Live! brand flagships. The project underscores a broader industry shift in which integrated resorts compete as dining destinations first and gaming floors second, deploying multi-concept F&B portfolios to drive repeat visitation, extend dwell time, and increase average check across dayparts.
The F&B Portfolio
Three anchor concepts lead the dining lineup. Sports & Social — a USA Today Top 10 Sports Bar honoree operating in 18 locations nationally — will bring an 8,000-square-foot venue with an 82-foot-wide LED display wall, made-from-scratch gameday menus, and curated cocktail programming. The format is designed to function as a standalone entertainment draw, layering interactive games and high-energy event programming on top of sports viewing to compete with arenas for fan engagement on non-game days. The Prime Rib®, a fine-dining steakhouse chain that holds a 2026 Wine Spectator Award of Excellence and consistent Zagat #1 rankings across its D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana locations, will anchor the upscale tier. Luk Fu rounds out the named concepts with a Pan-Asian menu spanning Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, and Japanese cuisine; the brand took "Best Asian and Best Sushi" honors at Casino Player Magazine's 2025 Best of Dining & Nightlife Awards. Both The Prime Rib and Luk Fu interiors are being designed by Beth Bloom Designs, a national hospitality design firm.
Additional dining and beverage outlets — including local hospitality partnerships — are expected to be announced through 2027, suggesting the final F&B mix will lean into regional supplier relationships as part of the property's community-impact positioning.
Scale and Economic Footprint
The resort's physical program includes a 200-room upscale hotel, resort pool, spa, and fitness center; a 35-table poker room within a broader live-table-games offering of 70-plus games; 1,600-plus slot machines; a sportsbook; and a 70,000-square-foot multi-purpose event center. That event center is a meaningful revenue-management asset: flexible convention, concert, and social-event capacity allows operators to drive food-and-beverage covers and hotel room nights independent of gaming volume — a risk-diversification model increasingly common in regional casino hotel development.
On the economic-impact side, the project is projected to generate $2.8 billion in regional stimulus across the first decade of operation, including $504 million in tax revenues and $201 million in annual economic benefits post-opening. During the construction phase alone, the project accounts for an estimated $802 million in economic activity and approximately 6,100 construction jobs.
The property's workforce pipeline also has a hospitality-tech dimension worth watching: a partnership with Richard Bland College's Dealer Institute offers a free seven-week table-games training program, with a new cohort beginning November 16, 2026. Structured workforce pipelines tied to community colleges are increasingly a compliance and licensing requirement for regional gaming operators, and they mirror the apprenticeship and training-platform models gaining traction in broader foodservice labor management strategies.
The Live! brand's existing portfolio — Maryland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Louisiana, and the Pennsylvania-licensed PlayLive.com internet gambling platform — gives Cordish Gaming Group a multi-property data infrastructure that operators can leverage for loyalty program cross-pollination, centralized purchasing, and menu engineering benchmarking across venues. How that infrastructure scales to the Virginia property's 20-concept F&B stack will be a case study for casino hotel F&B technology integrators watching the regional gaming expansion cycle.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
